Biography
Paul Hörbiger (29 April 1894 – 5 March 1981) was an Austrian theatre and film actor. Born in Budapest, then part of Austria-Hungary, he trained for the stage after the First World War and made his debut in 1919 at the city theatre in Reichenberg (now Liberec). He performed in Prague and, from 1926, at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin under Max Reinhardt, later joining the Burgtheater in Vienna.
From 1928 he appeared in more than 250 films, chiefly comedies of the Wiener Film genre. He played Karl the Porter in Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949), learning his English lines phonetically. Other screen roles included appearances in Spies (1928) and Asphalt (1929). He was arrested by the Nazi authorities for treason towards the end of the Second World War.
Hörbiger remained active in film and television into the 1970s, including a role in the Tatort episode Scene of the Crime (1970). He served as chairman of First Vienna FC between 1947 and 1949.
